Marco and a mystery home visit

Last updated at 20:45 07 January 2008

The increasingly fraught and complicated divorce of tempestuous restaurateur Marco Pierre White and his Spanish wife Mati has taken another extraordinary turn.

The feuding couple, who seem to have conducted much of the disintegration of their marriage in front of diners at Marco's various establishments, are due in the High Court in London today for a hearing before a judge. It is likely to deal with family and financial matters.

Yet just ahead of these latest legal manoeuvres, I can reveal that the 46-year-old Hell's Kitchen star has unexpectedly resumed full-time residence at the couple's Holland Park apartment.

Although he has spent occasional nights at the marital home since their split last year, he moved back in four nights ago.

Mati, 42, has been telling friends that after the collapse of the union, her husband's visits to the £3.5 million flat have been sporadic and unscheduled. Says one friend: 'He returns for infrequent baths and to collect clothes and shooting equipment. It is very difficult for Mati.'

In July last year, Mati was granted a decree nisi on the grounds of her husband's unreasonable behaviour.

The couple married in April 2000 after the births of their sons, Luciano, 14, and Marco Jnr, 12. They had been together since 1992 and went on to have a daughter, Mirabelle, now six. Marco also has an 18-year-old daughter, Leticia Rosa, by Alex McCarthy, the first of his three wives.

Following the granting of the decree nisi, Marco pleaded with Mati not to make the divorce absolute. He told her that he was concerned with the effect of the split on the children.

It is not clear if she has ever collected her decree absolute. But their domestic turmoil has been accompanied by theatrical incidents played out in public.

On one occasion, a distraught Mati confronted a female member of staff at Marco's flagship restaurant, Luciano's in St James's, and accused her of sleeping with her husband.

On another, the chef's prized collection of hunting trophies was ripped from the wall and dumped in the street.

And last month the couple had a confrontation when Mati arrived at Marco's Knightsbridge eaterie Frankie's Bar And Grill only to be ordered from the premises. She left in tears.

'Marco doesn't want to get divorced,' says a friend. 'He is obsessive about the children. But Mati just can't live with him any more. It is all terribly sad.'

When it is raining, it is pouring for Olivia

Mention rain to sultry young actress Olivia Hallinan and a shiver runs down her spine. For the constant deluge of last summer - the wettest since records began - threatened to jeopardise 23-year-old Olivia's biggest screen role to date.

She plays the heroine Laura Timmins in the BBC's lavish costume drama Lark Rise To Candleford, adapted from Flora Thompson's classic memoirs. But during location filming there was so much rain in Wiltshire that the big-budget production lost five weeks' shooting.

Says Olivia, the youngest of four sisters from Hounslow, West London, who starred as a lesbian in Sugar Rush: "The BBC built elaborate outdoor sets near Bath, but they were damaged by a tornado. Then we were banned from filming a pig chase scene because of the foot and mouth crisis.

"We thought we'd be sweltering in our heavy period costumes, but we were hugging hotwater bottles to keep the chill at bay."

So why is Stephen Fry's character Peter Kingdom in the eponymous Sunday-night ITV drama doomed to remain single?

Pudding-faced Fry conveniently blames his own homosexuality, telling the Radio Times: "I think the fact that I'm so well known to be gay makes it very difficult to have a convincing relationship with a woman on screen.

"Straight actors can play gay people and they're congratulated on it. People say: 'Ooh, how brave of you.' But no one says of a gay actor, if you play a heterosexual person: 'How brave of you to kiss that woman. That must have been difficult for you.'

"It wouldn't be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman. I'll kiss a frog if you like."

Steady on!

Freddie's country escape

Eschewing a winter break on the ski slopes or in the Caribbean, Lord Freddie Windsor whisked his actress girlfriend Sophie Winkleman to the blustery Suffolk coast.

At the weekend the couple booked into the discreet Crown And Castle Hotel in Orford, which is run by cookery author and TV presenter Ruth Watson, and stayed in a chalet-style garden room.

The hotel usually caters for sailing types, but Freddie and Sophie (pictured) were there because the hotel is just around the corner from where her parents, publisher Barry Winkleman and his wife Cindy, have a second home.

Says a fellow guest: "They were very lovey-dovey. There was quite a lot of kissing - and bottom touching."

On Sunday morning after breakfast, Freddie drove Sophie the 200 yards to her parents' cottage and dropped her off.

Lady Colin Campbell is not worried whether billionairess Lily Safra sues her for a second time over her book Empress Bianca - about an heiress whose husbands keep dying - because the royal biographer has sold all her rights over the story, including the film options.

As I revealed, Yul Brynner's film producer daughter Victoria wants to turn the novel - which had to be pulped in Britain after Safra threatened court action - into a Hollywood mini-series.

It might risk the wrath of Safra again, but Lady Colin - born Georgie Ziadie - will avoid further legal problems.

"I made all the changes Safra felt identified her and then I sold all the rights for a modest sum," she says. "But I retained the right to get paid for promoting both the book and the film in America. Which means I get paid - but not sued."

Meanwhile, Lady Colin is busy writing her latest work, a biography of her late mother, entitled Daughter Of Narcissus. "It has gallows humour, which I hope will be entertaining," she tells me.

Lord Brocket's two-and-a-half years in prison for fraud have clearly not dented his admiration for the boys in blue.

The gregarious Old Etonian, who has since rebuilt his life as a TV presenter and after-dinner speaker, has been signed up to play a copper in Clubbing To Death, a British gangster movie starring Craig Charles and Nick Moran.

In the cast list, Brocket, 55, is sandwiched between "Man in Toilet, Tony the Barman and Rude Dancer".

PS Excitable reports that Princess Diana's former lover Hasnat Khan will testify at the inquest into her death are wide of the mark.

The heart surgeon, who has returned to his native Pakistan, tells me he has no plans to appear at the High Court either in person or by video link, as some overseas witnesses have done.

He has, however, agreed that the statement he made to the Scotland Yard investigation four years ago can be read to the court. "People will be disappointed if they think it is chapter and verse on his relationship with the Princess - it isn't," a friend of Khan tells me.